A celebration of earthy ingredients & real food

Papaya White Pepper Spiced Smoothie

The Troll recently had a bit of a crisis which involved being diagnosed with an extreme magnesium deficiency. He now needs to take his PILLS every morning with food. The problem is that he doesn’t really eat food {in the morning}. So in an attempt to aid the cause of conscientious pill taking I found myself in the kitchen this morning making him a smoothie. He says that if one can drink it then it’s less of a hassle than eating. Eating, a hassle?ANYWAY. Moving on!

I have actually made many of these smoothies before. Mainly out of the instinctual urge to rectify this nonbreakfast habit. Which by the way I have now found myself practicing as well, only in my case it is called ‘intermittent fasting’. No matter!

So my point is, I have made these smoothies so many times. At first I thought my addition of nice spices like nutmeg and cinnamon was creative. But this morning this somehow seemed insipid.

And guess what I discovered? WHITE PEPPER. And I am not mad. After a little research, I realised that white pepper is used in sweet and delicious things such as chai tea, and there are people out there making chai smoothies I’ll have you know. Pepper is also a star ingredient in those yummy Christmas cookies from Germany, pfeffernuse.

So what I did was I scooped out my papaya, added a little banana, and a dash of lemon. Lemon helps smoothies to keep their color in the fridge. Vital when the person they are destined for not only does not eat breakfast, but tends to leave cups undrunk in strange places.

I blended all this with some yoghurt, coconut oil, and a bit of milk until it was smooth and pretty. One of my favorite colors, papaya smoothie! I added often add in regular milk so that it is not too thick. There are no lactose issues in this house – rather the opposite, I wish I knew where all the cheese goes! However if you do not want to put milk in your smoothie, just add yoghurt and some water or other fruit juice.

Once my smoothie was done I tried a little on a teaspoon with an angels dusting of white pepper. Well either angels have heavy hands, or white pepper is damned strong. I took another spoonful and put even less pepper this time.

Delicious! I really like it. The slight heat of the (moderated) amount of white pepper was pleasing, and the whole smoothie came to life actually. Of course it would have been tasty even without the white pepper, but I am definitely going to be adding white pepper to my list of possible smoothie additives. Or cookies for that matter. My mom has this great recipe for Cayenne Pepper Crunchies.. and I am thinking of some modifications!

By the way, before we get into the recipe I just want to say that I am not doing my own smoothie much justice. I did actually get this recipe tasting really nice. And do you want to know what i think the secret ingredient is? The coconut oil. Often when making smoothies I would think – oh for some coconut milk, or even good old dairy cream! Something to give my smoothie a rich smoothness to it. And then one day I added in coconut oil. Against my better judgement. And it was just what I was looking for.

So, my point is, if you want to make the smoothie WITHOUT the white pepper – go ahead. I found cinnamon was the obvious addition, and a tiny dot of cloves was also good. You can also swop out the yoghurt for kefir if you have some on hand.

Papaya White Pepper Spiced Smoothie

Ingredients

+ 1 cup papaya

1 banana

1/3 cup yoghurt (or kefir)

1/3 cup milk (or water)

2 heaped tablespoons coconut oil

1/2 fresh lemon

White Pepper

Instructions

Blend the papaya, banana, milk (or water), yoghurt, coconut oil and juice from the lemon until it is smooth and creamy looking. Now add the tiniest bit of black pepper. Stir and taste. Continue until it is at a level of spiciness which you like.